A small epic that blends magic realism with grim realities, always memorably.
An elegantly written multigenerational novel set in 19th- and early-20th-century Syria.
Khalifa, the most prominent Syrian writer at work today (albeit in exile), opens with a scarifying moment from history: a 1907 flood that swept away a small town along the Euphrates River. There are few survivors. Two are friends, the Christian Hanna Gregoros and the Muslim Zakariya Bayazidi, both of whom were away at the time; of those at home, only Bayazidi’s wife, Shaha Sheikh Musa, and Mariana Nassar lived through the flood. The destruction is total, and both friends lose their sons. For his part, “Hanna felt like the flood hadn’t just drowned his wife and son; it had drowned all his sordid and uproarious past, his entire life.” Sordid it was, and Bayazidi, less inclined to repentance, was only too glad to take part in the brothel visits and drunken nights that, even before the flood, Hanna was tiring of, although he had committed to building a citadel of sin with, as Bayazidi says, “a stage especially for suicides.” With a star-crossed artist friend named William Eisa, their Xanadu on the Euphrates grows until the disaster changes everything, whereupon Mariana takes a more central role in the story. It’s not the first catastrophe to have struck the village, as Khalifa writes, taking the friends to their childhood a quarter-century earlier and a massacre of Christians by the Ottoman government; nor will it be the last, as plague and famine strike and religious fundamentalism hardens, foreshadowing the horrors that have beset Syria in our own time. The Syria Khalifa evokes is one where Muslims, Christians, and Jews, Greeks, Turks, and Arabs overlook their differences to forge friendships and family ties; and although his storyline sometimes wanders between seemingly disconnected episodes, the extraordinary closing pages, poetic and prophetic, speak to the possibility of building a “kingdom where life is fresh and tender and the fish never die.”
A small epic that blends magic realism with grim realities, always memorably.Pub Date: July 18, 2023
ISBN: 9780374601928
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
IN THE NEWS
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.
A high school senior pursues an affair with her teacher.
Seventeen-year-old Waldo, the narrator of McCurdy’s fiction debut, lives in Anchorage, Alaska, with her mother, though she’s long been the parent in their relationship. She heats her own frozen meals and pays the bills on time while her mom chases man after man and makes well-meaning promises she never keeps. Waldo blows her Victoria’s Secret wages on online shopping sprees and binges on junk food, inevitably crashing after the fleeting highs of her indulgences. Mr. Korgy, her creative writing teacher, has “thinning hair and nose pores”; he’s 40 years old and married with a child. Nevertheless—or possibly as a result?—Waldo’s attraction to him is “instant. So sudden it’s alarming. So palpable it’s confusing.” Mr. Korgy professes to want to keep their friendship aboveboard, but after a sexual encounter at the school’s winter formal that she initiates, an affair begins. Will this reckless pursuit be the one that actually satisfies Waldo, and is she as mature as she thinks she is? Waldo is a keen observer of people and provides sharp commentary on the punishing work of female beauty. Readers of McCurdy’s bestselling memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died (2022), will surely be curious about the tumultuous mother-daughter relationship, and it is one of the novel’s highlights, full of realistic pity and anger and need. (“I want to scream at her. I want her to hug me.”) Unfortunately, the prose is often unwieldy and sometimes downright cringeworthy: When Waldo tells Mr. Korgy she loves him, “The words hang in the air in that constipated way they do when you know that you shouldn’t have said them.” Waldo frequently lists emotions and adjectives in triplicate, and events that could be significant aren’t sufficiently explored or given enough space to breathe before the novel races on to the next thing.
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593723739
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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